El Salvador Revisited

TEXT & PHOTOS BY ADAM KUFELD

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, November 16, 1997

1997-11-16 04:00:00 PDT EL SALVADOR -- "El Salvador's Left wins at the ballot box what it couldn't by the gun." El Salvador was back in the news, and I was riveted. I'd become disheartened in the years since my last visit to the country to cover the war in 1989. What little I'd heard had led me to believe that after all the years of war, El Salvador was still doomed to the cycle of poverty, desperation and stratification of rich and poor that has become a painful reality for so many in Latin America.

The country had lost so much. Over 75,000 people, mostly civilians, had been killed, most at the hands of a U.S.-trained and -armed military and Salvadoran death squads. Thousands had "disappeared" and hundreds of thousands forced into exile - at least 125,000 of these men, women and children sought refuge in the Bay Area.

Now, it looked as though the very Salvadoran people the United States had spent over six billion dollars to defeat were coming to power through legal elections earlier this year.

What was going on?

I searched the Internet and called friends for news. The election results were astounding: Mayoral candidates from the Left Opposition FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) had won not only the capital city of San Salvador, but also the second largest city, Santa Ana; two more of the five largest cities; and an additional fifty municipalities. They'd also won 27 legislative seats - only one less than the governing rightist National Republican Alliance, ARENA. While the FMLN had taken fewer mayoral seats than ARENA, it had won in the most populated areas. In fact, it would be governing over 45 percent of the population, making it the second largest political force in the country. The ARENA party, whose deceased leader Roberto D'Aubuisson was credited with founding the death squads and masterminding the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, has always represented the wealthy elite and was thought to be unbeatable. It had unlimited resources and control of the state apparatus. Clearly something radical was going on. I had to see for myself.

At the entrance to the capital, a new statue rears up to welcome returning Salvadorans. The words under the rather sexless figure have become a standard joke. In Spanish, it reads, Bienvenido Hermano Lejano: "Welcome back brother from far away." Locals ironically call it

"el monumento del hermano mojado: monument to the wetback brother." Given how many thousands fled the war and the death squads without benefit of a visa, it seems mordantly accurate.

During the war, the Camino Real Hotel on the Boulevard de los Heroes had been home to the often sweat-soaked, dusty and unshaven international press corps, of whom I'd been one. I hadn't seen the Camino since 1989, when the FMLN launched the major offensive of the war. We'd watched from second story offices as government planes dropped Bengal lights, flares that turned night into blueish day as the army searched for guerrillas below. Helicopters had hovered as their red tracer bullets streaked through the air and white-yellow rockets tore through the night and exploded. The FMLN had surrounded the city, penetrating the wealthiest neighborhoods. It was this offensive, in which it became clear that neither side could win militarily, that led to negotiations which ultimately ended the war.

Now the Boulevard glowed with a different light. The yellow of McDonald's, the blue of Blockbuster Video, the red of Pizza Hut. And there was Wendy's and Bressler's, Texaco and Shell. Sadly, I wondered if this was what the fighting had really been about.

On this night, the Camino, now a luxury hotel, was home to a very different crowd. In the days before the inauguration of new deputies to the National Assembly, a coalition of women's organizations were calling a meeting to secure commitments from all parties for a platform supporting women's rights. Among the women inside I recognized former FMLN women guerrilla commanders - some of whom we'd sought out in the mountains to interview and photograph during the war. These resistance fighters had once topped the country's most-wanted list; now, they wore not army fatigues but skirts, and carried beepers instead of pistols. In a political about-face, these women - many of whom had spent years in the mountains, in prison, or organizing clandestinely in the city - were about to become part of a national assembly with the third highest representation of women in the world.

Only two parties showed up to voice support for the women's platform; the FMLN and the Democratic Convergence. Hardly surprising, as the lame duck assembly had just passed a law criminalizing abortion. The right wing was trying to pass as many laws as it could before losing its majority in the Assembly. Anger and frustration ruled the evening. The discussion was very familiar: It was poor women who would suffer, losing their lives to meat-market abortionists. They would try, they said, to change the law as soon as the opportunity presented itself. Lorena Pena, whose nom de guerre had been "Rebecca," addressed the crowd: "We've always been bad; we're going to stay bad, and if need be, we'll get worse."

Later in the evening as I relaxed with the women, buffet plates full of turkey and glasses full of rum and coke, Lorena must have read my mind. Speaking very much as

"Rebecca" might have, she said, "Just because we're now in this fancy hotel, enjoying good food, we have not given up our political principles. We are not different people." For me, it was still too early to tell.

May Day in El Salvador is big, even in ordinary years. Stores close for the holiday, there are demonstrations in the tens of thousands. A May Day demonstration had always been a good place to go to get a sense of how the "people" felt about the Left. In the war years, the tension had been palpable; you could never really relax. Police or soldiers had hung out on the edge of the crowd, making their presence known. In the early 1980s, demonstrators had been fired on, leaving scores dead. It wasn't until 1985 that people took to the streets again, emboldened by having a guerrilla army in the mountains as a counter balance. Today, as I watched, the fear was gone. The new police force, now made up of both ex-FMLN and former cops, mingled with the crowd.

This May Day was particularly important: It was also the day of the inaugurations. Before the traditional march, there'd be a public event in the streets to support the newly-elected deputies; in the evening, parties in plazas around the country - at least where the FMLN had won. As in the old days, the sides of buildings bore spray-painted political graffiti. Today, it was about the Japanese embassy in Peru, where a number of guerrillas had just been killed in the process of freeing the hostages they had taken. It was hot, as it always was on May Day, in the 1990s and dripping humidity. Street vendors still sold drinks, with the contemporary twist of cold mineral water in plastic bags. Sweat still poured off my forehead, fogging my camera's viewfinder. This was the familiar El Salvador.

Shockingly different - to someone who'd only seen this country at war - were the red and white flags of the FMLN, which were everywhere, and a sea of "Che" T-shirts. FMLN

"souvenirs" such as pens, hats, T-shirts, cups, and sweat bands were selling out. They might have been more than something to keep the sun out of your eyes or the sweat off your brow, maybe small but powerful symbols, statement of hard-won victory. I watched as a popsicle vendor eyed a sweat band from over her shoulder, then picked it up and tied it on. While it's true the war has been over for five years, such deep-rooted fear doesn't easily die.

I learned that Maria Navarrete had been elected to the National Assembly. She'd been a peasant organizer for years, and then a guerrilla leader. She had lost a daughter in a most horrible way. Articulate and funny, Navarrete was the subject of the award-winning documentary, Maria's Story. When I'd spent two months in the northern mountains of El Salvador, following and photographing guerrillas and civilian supporters in 1986, she'd essentially taken me under her wing. Half-way into my stay, when we had to flee the army, she smilingly told me how happy she was for me: I would get to experience what they called a guinda ... a forced march.

I tried to imagine what Maria would wear to the inauguration; she was no city slicker. I found her at the edge of the crowd wearing a bright red skirt and white blouse, the colors of the FMLN. We had an emotional reunion. "I taught him to eat beans," was the valorous description she gave of me when I introduced her to a friend. We discussed her new role in the government. All in all, it seemed, she was glad to have been elected but not at all happy about how much time she'd have to spend in the city. "I'm already estresada (stressed out)," she said.

Attending the swearing-in session of the National Assembly later that day was like watching wrestlers being introduced rather than newly-elected deputies. A crowd in the gallery cheered, chanted, applauded and booed loudly. While the FMLN had already been represented in the Assembly, it was now clearly "The Opposition." Neither ARENA nor the FMLN would be able to pass legislation by itself. The parties would have to work together, and with others. The first vote had been telltale: Shafick Handal of the FMLN, and Sigfrido Ochoa, once-commander of the 3rd Brigade and now a representative of the PCN (Party of National Conciliation, the traditional party of the military) voting together, against ARENA. For the first time in a very long time, ARENA lost. Its absolute grip on power had been broken.

But the issue was sustainability. The question I heard over and over was whether these people, who had been at war with one another for years, would really be able to pull it off. Would they be able to govern the country together? On one side were those who had backed the death squads; on the other, those who had lost family to them. Those who continue to live with servants and swimming pools behind walls covered with barbed wire and bougainvillaea, and those who still scramble to feed their families or nurse a sick child when there's no money for medicine. Their interests are fundamentally different.

Driving through the countryside, I was struck with how little has actually changed. The majority of rural Salvadorans are still desperately poor. Most continue to live in one-room shacks with tin or thatched roofs. Far from being a relic image from 1970s Africa or Latin America, children with stomachs bloated from parasites and malnutrition still play in the dirt in front of these shacks. Soberingly, under ARENA's neo-liberal policies the price of beans had almost tripled between 1992 and 1996. Without more palpable change at the level of the country's poorest, it seemed to me, El Salvador could slip inexorably back into war.

But this May Day, there were public ceremonies and celebrations around the country as newly-elected mayors took over from those defeated. In the capital, Hector Silva, born in Boston and trained in the United States as a medical doctor, had won as a coalition candidate for the FMLN and two smaller parties. After the formal swearing-in at the National Theater, he left the hall and walked two blocks, crossed a plaza full of supporters, mounted the stage and let loose. "There are no miracle cures for San Salvador," the new mayor called out to the crowd. "Change will be difficult and slow, but there will be change." He would be facing the city's most basic, yet fundamental, issues:

* Crime: El Salvador has become the most dangerous country in the world that is not at war. There are over 22 murders a day and many more assaults and robberies. Tragically, almost unbelievably, at the current rate, more people will die in the next 10 years of peace than died during the war years. And then there are the gangs. Young Salvadoran men are being deported from the United States (many from L.A.), and some are forming and joining gangs in major Salvadoran cities. Arms and munitions, legacies of the war and available around the country, are now in the hands of many men experienced in their use. Desperation drives the violence: With over 60 percent living below the poverty level, many see no alternative to the gun.

* Traffic control: The number of vehicles in the capital has increased five-fold in as many years. The resulting pollution, much of it from U.S. imported diesel buses, is an attributable and increasing source of infant pulmonary disease and death.

* Garbage disposal: The San Salvador garbage dump is full. It pollutes scores of wells in the area. The out-going mayor is accused of having taken a $4 million dollar kickback from a Canadian company that wanted to install a garbage incinerator; cause of substantially more pollution.

* Corruption: Public works projects lie unfinished, leading to speculation that money from international organizations has been systematically diverted. Defeated ARENA mayors in several municipalities have emptied bank accounts, taken the guns of the municipal agents with them, and sabotaged records, phone lines - even air conditioners. In one case, a mayor who also owned a bus company took all the spare tires off the garbage trucks for use on his buses.

If the FMLN now governs 45 percent of the country, what does that mean? The party had won 10 municipalities in the 1994 elections, and I'd read about its work since then. In Tecoluca, third largest of those municipalities and home to an almost completely rural population, the FMLN has been governing with a stability that allows citizens and non-governmental agencies to explore rural development alternatives. It seemed like a place to start, if I wanted to gauge the party's track record to date.

Mayor Nicolas Garcia, like most of Tecoluca's population, is a peasant. Raised on the slopes of the Chinchontepec volcano, he organized a peasant union in the early 1970s and joined the guerrilla movement in 1974, after his brother was killed in a massacre. He spent a good part of the war defending the land he'd grown up on. He was elected mayor in 1994, but became frustrated with ARENA's refusal to release government funds to an FMLN-controlled municipality. Reluctant to run again in 1997, he nonetheless relented to popular demand - quick, however, not to promise a lot of fancy projects. "It's very important to be able to carry through on what you do promise," he said.

Most of the 25,000 people of Tecoluca are campesinos, farmers and agricultural workers who became refugees or combatants during the war. The municipality's victories since the 1994 elections have been hard-won, the fruit of battles fought with government and international funding agencies determined to keep money out of their former adversary's town. Persistent, orchestrated campaigns of popular protest and office negotiations, led by peasant organizations, local NGOs, and the mayor and his municipal council, have paid off. The ARENA government has been obliged to pay for schools, and to allow the U.S. Agency for International Development to subsidize a major road. Among the achievements of this coordinated effort are a new town marketplace and drinking water in each of Tecoluca's villages. The report Garcia showed me identified those who had provided aid for each project, and how much it had cost.

Tecoluca has no doubt inspired regional municipalities. In the 1997 election, the FMLN won two neighboring towns, Zacatecoluca and Jiquilisco, among the 54 overall. The successes are promising, but the new mayors face distinct challenges. One battle, as a few have said themselves, will be to keep corruption out of their town halls. A second - one the citizens of Tecoluca learned in the previous term - will be tough: The mayors will have to work with local NGOs and organized citizens to pressure the Salvadoran government and international agencies, the European Economic Community and USAID, among others, to allocate development funds to municipal projects. It can be done. Garcia's mayorship has demonstrated the power of organization, and of attention to the concrete needs of a town and its people.

One of the major issues in El Salvador has always been land tenure and land use: It was in large part the unequal distribution of land that led to the war. In a primarily agrarian society, generations of Salvadorans have been involved in agriculture in one way or another, but the great majority remain landless, and poverty is the norm. The Peace Accords of 1992 introduced reforms giving land to ex-combatants of both the FMLN and the military. Communities such as Tecoluca are working hard to make this land productive and economically and ecologically sustainable. Production units (Unidads de Production) have been developed, resulting in experimental agricultural stations and the introduction of new methods.

One transformation is the trend toward organic agriculture. Visiting a cashew processing plant, I was told, "Not only do we get a higher price for organically-grown nuts on the international market, it's much more sound ecologically." Certainly new thinking, in a part of the world that has so heavily relied on cheap chemicals - often those now illegal in the U.S., such as DDT. "Someone from Ben & Jerry's ice cream was even down here, checking out the cashew fruit," they added.

Ironically, AID is now financing some of these projects: the United States government aiding the very people it spent so many billions of dollars to defeat not five or six years ago. Again, I was struck by how senseless the war had been, how many lives lost for nothing. The war had always been, at least for the majority of Salvadorans, a fight to improve their lives. Now we send aid instead of arms, as could have been done from the beginning.

After spending a few days in the Tecoluca area, we prepared to leave for San Salvador. I was traveling with the San Francisco-based organization, the Share Foundation. We stopped in the community of Santa Monica so Share staff could meet with community leaders. I wandered over to a newly refurbished schoolhouse and discovered a literacy class for women under way. As the class allowed me to photograph, a group of government soldiers and members of the newly formed National Civilian Police showed up. I couldn't help but flash to the past. An encounter like this could have ended only one way, just years ago.

Now, the scene was cautiously friendly, rather than an armed confrontation. An amiable young man from the police played with a capirucho, a little wooden toy that flips up and down, trying to get it to land on a tiny peg. He had painted it red and added, in white, the logo of the FMLN. He told me how much he liked his work, that he felt really good about trying to protect the community. One of the government soldiers, by contrast, was just waiting for his service to be up. He didn't particularly like being in the military. When I asked him if he felt any antagonisms for the FMLN, he seemed surprised. "No, why?" he asked.

"People are free to do what they want now."

El Salvador was changing.

Before leaving El Salvador, I wanted to go back to the area in which I had spent the most time, eight years ago, in the northern mountains of Chalatenango province. With its long history of political organizing, Chalatenango became a guerrilla stronghold during the war. It witnessed several headline-grabbing massacres in the 1980s and, by mid-decade, had become a textbook case of counter-insurgency: an echo of Vietnam. As in Vietnam, the government strategy was to "dry up the sea to catch the fish." In practical terms, it meant depriving the guerrillas of their civilian support - support the government said didn't exist. Continuous military operations forced thousands to flee to refugee camps in Honduras or the capital. Those who stayed, formed organizations that dealt with sheer survival; at the same time creating small-scale models of the kind of revolutionary society they were struggling to achieve nationwide.

It was in this mountainous area that I spent two months in 1986 as a guest of these "local popular governments," as they were called. There was no electricity, no running water and little food. Certainly no cars. Many towns had been completely abandoned. San Jose Las Flores, while largely depopulated, had an intact basketball court that was perfect for dances. On special occasions, guerrillas from the surrounding hills, rifles slung over their shoulders, would join civilians and dance all night to local bands.

Now, the elections of 1997 had put the provincial capital and a majority of municipalities, including Las Flores (for the second time), into the hands of the FMLN. I returned to Chalatenango City to witness the celebration.

By nightfall, several thousand had filled the plaza. From a flatbed truck, newly-elected candidates gave their victory speeches, after which a band played songs of the revolution. At 10 p.m., the dormant stage came to life. Colored strobes and smoke machines spun surreally to a merengue beat. A vocalist in fishnet stockings and the shortest of shorts belted it out on stage. Between sets, fireworks exploded in front of barracks of the once-feared 4th Brigade. Handmade paper balloons in the colors of the FMLN were released into the hot night over the cheering crowd.

The next day, we drove to my old haunt, San Jose Las Flores. The road leading to the town is one of the most beautiful in the country. The rains had just begun and already the trees were leafing out, orchids starting to bloom. As we rounded a curve, there was Las Flores, clinging to the side of a mountain across the valley. Still half an hour away, I wondered what would have changed, 11 years and a war later. As we got closer, it became clear the town was coming back to life. A granary and a new supermarket were under construction, and there was a new bakery.

As we reached the center of town, I realized that while the old basketball court was still there, the town church was in rubble. It had been a beautiful old church, and it had a history. During the war, it had been a refuge as much as anything else when the military made periodic sweeps of the area. In 1987, I was with a small group when we heard that the army was headed our way. We'd heard bombs and mortars all day in the surrounding hills and, as night fell, we moved into the church. It wouldn't have saved us from bombs, of course, but if the army came through it would afford us, we hoped, a bit more security than in private homes. Now it was in ruins. "We had to take it down; it wasn't safe." A few community leaders had joined us. "The foundation was crumbling - we guess because of the bombings over the years - and we had no choice."

We were joined by a man I'd known long before as president of the "local popular government" in the area where I'd spent time during the war. I asked him who was the new mayor of the city; everyone gathered started laughing.

"You're talking to him!" they said. Such are the spoils of peace.

Before leaving, we stopped for lunch in a small restaurant on the plaza, while a copy of my book of photographs from the war years was passed around the community. After lunch, I walked into the adjacent dry goods store. The woman who had just cooked and served our lunch was there, looking at one of the photos from the book. When I walked over to see which one had caught her attention she looked up and asked if I had any small photos, copies of those in the book. I didn't. She looked back at the picture, an outdoor classroom in which a young girl, about 12, is standing to answer a question. She pointed and said,

"That's my daughter. She was killed in an army ambush in 1991." Then she pointed at two boys, her sons. "But he's still alive...and so is he."

It was an all-too-common response when the book was shown around.

It's been over 20 years since the end of the war in Vietnam. In that war, over 58,000 Americans and three million Vietnamese died because of what former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara now describes as "a tremendous error." Two decades after the war, Vietnam is still hotly debated, very much in the American consciousness. Yet only five years after the end of the war in El Salvador, interest in that country seems to have evaporated. The press has turned its back. In 12 years of war, El Salvador lost almost 1.5 percent of its population; proportionally, had the United States suffered such a loss, close to four million people would have died. The White House and the Pentagon pumped $1.5 million dollars a day into the fight "to make El Salvador safe for democracy." In so doing, it armed one of the worst abusers of human rights on the Latin American continent.

Three years from now, El Salvador will once again hold nationwide elections. If the FMLN continues to prove itself, it could very well move from opposition party to government of the country. Waiting to check in at the San Salvador airport for my flight home, I got word that the new U.S. ambassador to the country, Anne W. Patterson, was due to arrive any minute. I took off running and caught her statement to the press.

"...I want to continue to broaden the close relationship our two countries have enjoyed through the years.

"El Salvador in many respects is a model for developing nations. It has negotiated a peaceful solution after many years of war, and has established a democracy under the most difficult conditions..."

A week later, back in the U.S., I learned that in an interview with the largest Salvadoran daily paper, El Diario de Hoy, the new ambassador was asked if she liked fast food. She didn't, she responded, "but my country sure is good at exporting it." I thought back to the dozens of Pizza Huts, Domino's, McDonald's...all the joints I'd seen springing up around the country, and wondered about the future. If in the next elections the FMLN should become the governing party, would my government continue to work to make El Salvador safe for democracy...or for fast food?

Adam Kufeld worked as a photographer in El Salvador making 8 trips from 1985 to 1989. His book, El Salvador, was published by W.W.Norton in 1990. A second book, Cuba, was published by Norton in 1994. Kufeld's photographs from the war, taken from his El Salvador book can be found on the Internet at: www.atlasmagazine.com - an on-line magazine of photography and graphic art.&lt;